drugs

Let’s just see. Someone asked me how I was today and my response was “It’s Monday morning.”

When you slide open the sliding glass door to disembark from this office you are slammed in the face by a hot wall of aggressive humidity. A hail storm is on its way; I’ve received warnings. It is 4pm but it feels like about a million pm.

Last weekend we drove six hours to Wytaliba to attend Deliverance. It was at this party that I came to two realisations. Realisation the first: It is not my ever-increasing age that is the cause of my much worse hangovers come Sunday morning. It is the fact that I have been drinking wine.

WINE. That devil juice. A younger me would be all up in my grill with fiercely scathing scorn. SHE knew this, and only ever drank vodka. Along the way it was somehow forgotten since I mostly hang around snobby wine-douches now.

So I am forgoing wine. I will miss it, but I shan’t mind. My mind is made.

I don’t feel like publishing the second realisation.

Deliverance was lovelie, though, despite the drive to get there, which involved an hour-long climb over a mountain range shrouded in such deep fog we couldn’t see the cliffs bordering the crazily winding, unlit single lane road until we were almost driving off them.

Last night we watched The Agony of Ecstasy, a half hour “documentary” by/about a woman who took MDMA every weekend for two years and wanted to know if that’s why she experienced anxiety and depression.

Only instead of asking “Did this one person trigger her own mental illness by ignorantly indulging risk-seeking tendencies, lack of impulse control and reliance upon hyper-avoidant coping strategies in the form of repeatedly taking mood-altering chemicals over a long-term period?” the show asked “Does MDMA cause anxiety and depression?” and then answered this poorly informed and biased question with enough misinformation that I was shouting at the TV within the first 5 minutes.

In conclusion, don’t watch TV for your entertainment. Instead, just take drugs. In an informed and moderate manner, of course, because we’re not big old dummies. Some of us. P.S. Do what I say and not what I do, obvs.

I know I said in my last entry that I was doing better, but I’m not sure any more.

I am really struggling to go to work. It’s not the work itself that is stalling me… once I am actually doing it, I am often fine. Once I am writing the report, or the email, or sitting with the client, or typing up my notes, I am okay. I can handle it. I have thoughts like “What was I so worried about, I should have started this two hours ago.”

But leading up to it, waking up in the morning knowing I have to shower and dress and drive and sign in and say good morning to my colleagues and turn on my computer and DO THE WORK… the thought of it drags me down and fills me with dread and makes me want to be a homeless bum with no responsibilities or mortgage or pets or wardrobe choices or values or dreams or loved ones or life.

THE THOUGHT makes me depressed.

I mean, I’m not the same once I’m AT work either. Once I do start writing, or talking, or whatever, my attention is all over the fucking place, my focus is shit, I can’t make connections, I don’t. do. good. work. I mean, I’m not saying it’s simply all in my head (ha) and if I just get over it I’ll be fine.

But I’m pretty sure that’s a big part of it.

I haven’t taken my meds the past two days. I don’t feel it’s helping, really, and Brenton is really adamant that it’s bad for me. But at the same time I’m like.. it’s not hurting, is it? Maybe it will help, if I just keep taking it. Maybe it hasn’t been long enough.

Do I think Brenton is overstating the potential damage? Yes. He thinks SSRIs are like taking a low dose of MDMA every day. I’m pretty sure it works completely differently.

So why am I having this aversion to continuing my dosage? How can I get frustrated with my clients when they don’t maintain theirs?

Because a big part of why I don’t want to take mine is that I take recreational drugs, and SSRIs interfere with that. It is not safe or advisable to indulge while on Prozac.

I don’t have much pleasure lately, surely I shouldn’t be asked to give up recreational drugs as WELL?

Well. Jess. Come on. You are a professional. What would you tell a client?

It is not advisable to take recreational drugs right now. MDMA will deplete much needed serotonin. Opioids and amphetamines will have very low-mood after-effects (your mood is low enough) and possibly result in serotonin syndrome.

My advice to you, as a mental health professional, is to take your fucking Prozac, and lay off the rest.

I’m feeling a bit better. I started taking Prozac not long after that post and I’ve been on it a month now. It’s about the time you should start noticing improvement. I’m mostly noticing side effects so far, however. Decreased appetite, decreased dreaming, decreased sex drive. I am feeling better, but it goes up and down. Today I feel happy, but tired, really sleepy. I just took 2.5 mgs of dexamphetamine.

I’m halfway through cleaning the fish tank. I would like to get the skirting boards painted in the back bedroom but it is really hot today already. 29 degrees. ugh summer why you do dis 🙁

Since logging my food intake and going to the gym I’ve lost 3kg and am now my absolute ideal weight. I can tell because whenever I see my family they complain about me being too skinny. aw yiss. Like, it wasn’t my intention, but I’m still pleased. I’m happy with my body. I do have this little pot belly, though, that kinda drives me crazy.

Okay so I just tried to take a photo with my webcam and realised what I’m complaining about is laughable so forget I said anything.

This dex is making me feel a bit lightheaded and dazed. I thought it was supposed to help you focus? Focussing is the last thing I feel like doing. I feel like staring at a wall while shaking almost imperceptibly with tension.

Anyway this is a journal entry. What do I have to write about?

Last weekend we went with Josh, Stuart and Tom to Stanthorpe to the Australian Small Winemaker’s show. We paid $60 to try all the wines we wanted. There were a lot of wines.

I’ll take one of each plz

We may have all gotten a bit tipsy and had hilarious fun. I think I much prefer hanging out with boys than with girls, but I’m often frustrated that they seem to think they have to be more careful what they say around me. Then again, I do get all up in their grill if they make sexist jokes, so I guess it’s fair enough.

After the wine show, and after I’d become far too drunk and caught a taxi back to the hotel, leaving the boys at the Indian restaurant we’d walked through literal clouds of flying ants to get to (apparently I was a real brat because I wanted to walk and was arguing I’d be perfectly safe but the boys absolutely refused to let me leading to a half hour long debate before I finally let Brenton walk me to a taxi), the boys went out drinking some more, and Stuart and Tom both picked up women they took back to the hotel room (THAT THEY WERE SHARING WITH JOSH like seriously poor Josh).

Do you realise that paragraph was only one sentence? I’ve always been good at run-on sentences.

Anyway, the boys went out with dey game own. The thing is, I have to wonder if this would have happened if I’d been present. My theory is the fact that Stuart and Tom both “picked up” had more to do with each other than it did the women. I think it’s the competition. Proving to each other that they can do it; that they are desirable and can win all the wimmens and so they have more man-points. This theory is partially fed by an anecdote I’ve heard Brenton tell two or three times now: Tom at an early point in the evening said to Brenton, “I don’t think much of Stuart’s game, hey.” Then, later on in the night, when Stuart had clearly won access to the vagina of a worthy prize, Tom followed up with, “well I simply must eat my hat to that.”

I wonder if Brenton and Josh were more relieved that they were not expected to participate because they had girlfriends, or more put out that they couldn’t prove their absolute manhoodz with the others, and had to justify in their own minds “she would totes have chosen me over him if I’d been available.”

The weekend before that we had Brenton’s birthday partie. We went out for drinks, all Brenton’s friends invited. I was pretty drunk already when someone suggested tequila. Yeah! Great idea! Special occasion! I went and ordered ten shots. Thing was, not everyone wanted tequila… so, for some (stupid, stupid!) reason, I felt obliged to drink all the remaining shots. I’m unsure exactly how many that constituted but I know it was at least four. Yeah. Quite soon after I weaved my unsteady way to the disabled toilets and hung out on the floor for a while, various sympathetic friends assisting me. I don’t recall anything else from that night, but I shudder to think. Apparently I confided all my secrets to Marie, spent an hour on the phone to Storm, took everyone on a “where Brenton and I have had sex” tour of my house, and told Stu he was superficial.

What is this mess

O hey, hi my darling. I’m overocea & this is my journal. I’ve vowed to note my everyday inconsequence indefinitely, so that I can read it when I’m 80. I expect it to be hideously boring to anyone except an 80year old me.